Last Monday, I left Huehuetenango and chicken bussed it to Todos Santos ... a small indigenous village in the Cuchumatanes Mountains, the highest in central America. The road to get here ascends 1000m (3300 ft) up a windy scenic road before plunging into the valley on the other side where Todos Santos sits surrounded by huge mountain peaks. Although it´s only about a 25 mile trip, it took 2 1/2 hours! The road is rough, the views are amazing, and once I got ...

Today I said adios to my homestay family and jumped on a chicken bus headed for Huehuetenango ... or just Huehue(way-way) as the locals call it. The ride up to Huehue was rather unexciting but when I got there, the electricity was out. This wasn´t much of a problem til the sun went down as there was absolutely nothing to do on a Sunday evening here without electricy. There´s nothing to do here with the electricy either for that matter. Tomorrow, I am of...

Well, I finished my last day of spanish school today and as you can probably imagine, after all the hard work and stress, I need a vacation. Tomorrow I´m going to go relax in some natural volcanic saunas and hot springs and Sunday I´m going to get back on the road and start living out of my backpack again. My spanish is OK and the best way to keep learning now is to practice and actually use it. This, however, requires accepting the fact that major mist...

I am in my 4th and final week of Spanish school and I´m looking forward to traveling around aimlessly armed with my new language skills... which actually suck but I like to think I learned something in 4 weeks. The weather has changed significantly here in the western highlands. I am told they only have two seasons here: summer and winter and winter just started a few days ago. Winter means it´s the rainy season and they aren´t kidding. It rains ev...

This weekend, several of us took off for Lake Atitlan, specifically the town of Panajachel - sometimes called "Gringo-tenango" due to the number of American tourists here. The town became a hippy hangout in the 60´s and 70´s and is still famous for drugs and partying but also the most touristed town in all of Guatemala. The lake itself is surrounded by dormant volcanoes and mountains and is said to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. It was...